


In Cold-Kindled Fires

by MorningsofGold



Series: The Monmouth Dyptich [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Underage Drinking, dubiously dating, handjobs, in this house we don't talk about our feelings, late night monmouth folkloric makeout club, pre-blue, we gesture to them obliquely with welsh folklore, whiskey and storytelling to warm the long winter nights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:13:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22978945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorningsofGold/pseuds/MorningsofGold
Summary: Ronan watched him with that small, sharp smile, eyes flicking down to Gansey’s mouth.“Tell me a story, then.”“How do you feel about Welsh folklore?”Ronan took the bottle back. He licked up a droplet of whiskey dribbling down the neck, taking time with his tongue to ensure no whiskey was wasted. Gansey’s heart skipped a beat, and his chest tightened.“Hard mode,” Ronan said. “Nothing about Glendower.”
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch
Series: The Monmouth Dyptich [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1651354
Comments: 2
Kudos: 61





	In Cold-Kindled Fires

Gansey probably should have taken the realtor more seriously when she warned him Monmouth didn’t have central heat and air. But he was too busy being staggered by how absolutely, nonsensically perfect the idea of buying an entire abandoned industrial building was, losing himself in feverish fantasies about square footage for all his maps and miniatures. He had lived in plenty of strange places before, and after all, how hot and cold would it really get inside the building? Isn’t that what fans and blankets were for?

It was possible, perhaps, that he got a little overexcited and signed the lease without thinking things through. 

Summers were easier. He could strip down to shorts and stand in front of the open fridge. Or sprawl across the hardwood floors in a quasi-comatose state, flipping through research texts while waiting for the sun to go down. Winter was stubborn. The cold snuck in through every miniscule crack in the old building, slipped in under his covers at night and got into his bones. It wasn’t quite cold enough to be outright dangerous, at least not for a hale seventeen year old boy who tended to run hot anyway. But there was only so much warm showers and double-layered sweaters could do to stave off the chill. 

Gansey did his best to adapt. He grit his teeth against the icy baseboards underfoot and learned to ignore the numb tingling in his fingers and tip of his nose. Ronan, when he wasn’t out with Kavinsky doing God knows what, lived in wool socks and an oversized black hoodie emblazoned with the name of an electronica group. Between that and the space heaters, they got by, but by late January, the arrangement was starting to get old. 

“It’s fucking freezing,” Ronan snarled, traipsing through their shared floor in his curbstomper boots. 

Gansey looked up from the tiny traffic cone he was painting neon orange. His eyes would get worse soon, from all this squinting in the dark, but nothing quieted his mind in the middle of the night like his miniatures.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Not in this hellhole.”

Ronan was pissed off in that instinctive, half-hearted way that usually covered up a less fiery emotion. In this case, it was probably exhaustion. There were dark circles around his eyes and a hunch in his shoulders. 

“Take the extra space heater from my room,” Gansey said.

“And wake up tomorrow to find you frozen to death? No way I’m explaining that one to the cops.”

Ronan banged open the freezer and retrieved two cheap Ninos shot glasses, frosted over with a thin layer of ice. Then he snagged a bottle of whiskey from the top of the fridge, a bottle Gansey had discreetly tried to push out of easy reach. Most of what Ronan drank he pawned off Kavinsky or kept secreted in his room, but Gansey tried to at least discourage him from whatever he left laying around Monmouth. 

“Ronan,” Gansey said, a warning coiled in his voice.

“Come on,” Ronan replied. It was breezy in that intentional kind of way that told Gansey there would be no reprimanding Ronan tonight. Whatever crash-course he was on, he was going to ride it twenty over the limit. “You’re gonna make me drink alone?”

Gansey hoisted himself to his feet and stretched backwards as far as his aching back would allow to straighten his spine. He felt seventeen going on seventy.

“It’s one in the morning.”

“Sounds like nightcap o’clock to me. Nothing warms the guts like good old Jim Beam.”

“If I drink with you, will you go back to bed?”

“Eventually. If I get you buzzed will you stop obsessing over that clown town?”

“For the time being.”

Ronan wiped out the shot glasses with the tail of his shirt, then measured out two brimming pours of amber whiskey. He arched a hard eyebrow that told Gansey both were going in his stomach if Gansey didn’t drink his share, and Gansey plucked up one of the shot glasses with a sigh. The whiskey sloshed, dribbling down his thumb and wrists in a wet, sparkling line that drew Ronan’s crow-quick eyes.

“Sláinte,” Ronan said, and threw the whiskey back in one fluid, practiced motion. 

Gansey managed to get half his down without choking. He had never been much for hard drink, even though he wished he were the kind of person who could enjoy scotch on the rocks. Maybe he just needed to build up his palette.

“That burns hellaciously,” he said hoarsely, trying not to wheeze.

Ronan thumped him on the shoulder, then plucked up the bottle and started towards his bedroom.

“You get used to it. You coming or not?”

Ronan’s room was as impressively destroyed as ever, but it was slightly smaller than Gansey’s and lined with less glass windows, so it ended up being the warmest. Gansey shouldn’t have been surprised when Ronan opted for the enclosed, brooding burrow. He was the king of privacy and blackout curtains, and there must have been something about the room that made him feel safe, or at least isolated. To Ronan, maybe they were the same thing. 

Ronan hauled a shapeless mass of black laundry off one side of his bed and tossed his headphones up onto the pillow. They weren't like any Gansey had seen on the market. He wasn’t really the type of person who kept up on the latest tech releases, but he still wondered where Ronan could have gotten them. Then again, with Ronan, some questions were better left unasked. 

Ronan clambered onto the bed and Gansey followed. There was nowhere else to sit in the room, after all. As always, the duvet smelled like petrichor from the Barns, and cigarettes, and something quintessentially, indescribably Ronan. It probably meant it was overdue for a wash. But to Gansey, the scent was comforting. 

He was still holding his little shot glass, and he put back the rest of the whiskey before delicately setting the glass on Ronan's nightstand. Ronan had abandoned his glass somewhere and took a hearty swig from the bottle, barely grimacing. Gansey wished he could share in Ronan's enthusiasm for the stuff without being overtaken with worry about if this was going to be one of those nights Ronan pushed his limits too far. 

But Ronan screwed the lid back on his whiskey and set it on the table for the time being. The tight anxiety in Gansey's chest unwound, just a little bit. 

Maybe he could enjoy this without thinking about it too much. That was what teenagers were supposed to do, right? 

Historically, Gansey had made a pretty piss-poor teenager. 

“What’s got you up at this hour?” Gansey asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The warmth of the whiskey was blooming in his chest, spreading to every extremity. He could understand why Ronan liked this, even if it made his head feel a little spinny. 

Ronan shrugged, unlacing his combat boots. 

“Nightmares?” Gansey prompted.

Ronan tugged off his shoes with a ferocity that was not strictly necessary. 

“I guess. I just can’t keep asleep. Not when I can see my breath.”  
“I’ll order another heater.”

Ronan tucked his feet underneath him. His knees, bare through the holes ripped in his jeans, brushing against Gansey’s.

“Not worth it. We’re supposed to get a warm snap next week anyway. It’s just the pits of winter.”

There was a certain hopelessness to his voice that Gansey didn’t like. Summertime made Ronan restless; he stayed out later and popped off quicker from a shorter temper. But that wasn’t all bad. Summer put an adventuring gleam in Ronan’s eyes that led to plenty of last-minute hikes to waterfalls or drives down the interstate to pick up firecrackers to set off in the Monmouth parking lot. And summer had a way of making Gansey feel like he and Ronan were the only two real people in the whole burning world, the only two who mattered, anyway. 

Maybe summer set Gansey a little bit on fire too. 

But winter...Winter was the worst. It sapped the strength out of both of them, and it cast a dark shroud over Ronan that wouldn’t break until the sun was back. Winter in Virginia wasn’t as bad as other parts of the world, but it was cold enough, and darker than it had any right to be. 

It almost made Gansey wish Ronan was getting into more trouble, just so he wasn’t moping around looking listless. 

“Give me some more of that,” Gansey said, nodding towards the whiskey.

“You serious?”

“It’s how the old heroes passed the time and kept away the cold, right? Drinking and telling stories? If it was good enough for them it’s good enough for me.”

A tight, almost twisting smile plucked at the corner of Ronan’s mouth. He had a mouth like a violin string, taught without any softness to it. Now that mouth wrapped around the whiskey bottle, taking another swig. He pressed the bottle into Gansey’s hands. Gansey still had his shot glass, but he was feeling bold, or rather that he wanted to be bold. He imitated Ronan and drank straight from the bottle, pressing his lips to where Ronan’s had been.

Ronan watched him with that small, sharp smile, eyes flicking down to Gansey’s mouth. 

“Tell me a story, then.”

“How do you feel about Welsh folklore?”

Ronan took the bottle back. He licked up a droplet of whiskey dribbling down the neck, taking time with his tongue to ensure no whiskey was wasted.

Gansey’s heart skipped a beat, and his chest tightened. 

“Hard mode,” Ronan said. “Nothing about Glendower.”

“Fine,” Gansey replied, a little breathlessly. He had a way of forgetting Ronan looked like  _ that _ until something reminded him. Right now it was the way his eyes, usually such a pale blue, were bottomless dark in the small room. The way they watched Gansey so intently that his skin burned. 

Gansey looked down at this wool socks, and the tiny fray in the edge of the bedspread, and to his gnawed thumbnail, anywhere but right into Ronan’s face. 

"Pywll was a Celtic prince, beloved by his people. Generous, even-handed, undefeated in battle. The kind of man who everyone believed would make a great king, someday."

"That's a decent start," Ronan said, tossing himself back on the bed so he was laying sideways across it. He looked up at the ceiling, that smile still on his lips. “I don't think I know this one."

Ronan looked almost relaxed like that. Almost like he wasn’t a hurricane wearing the pale skin of a boy. Gansey supposed the liquor was setting in. He was certainly starting to feel it, warming his stomach and loosening his tongue and taking the tightness out of his shoulders. "

"One day, Pywll was hunting in the forest with his hounds, and he came across the most beautiful stag he had ever seen, pure white with huge antlers. Pywll gave chase, but he soon realized there was another rider with his own pack of dogs hunting down the animal. Pywll wasn't deterred. He hunted the stag down to the last, but it was such a close race that the dogs ended up fighting over the carcass. The two riders acknowledged each other's skill, and they dismounted to meet as equals."

Gansey wasn't sure if he was remembering the whole story right. It came up enough in Welsh folklore as a foundational myth that it was hard to avoid, but he had never attempted to learn it by heart. It wasn't inscribed into his insides the way the Glendower story was. Still, the words came smooth and easy, and he settled into the tale like he would into a warm bath.

"The other rider was named Arawn, and he was king in his own country. A country no mortal eye could see."

"I can barely hear you," Ronan grumbled, and tugged Gansey down by the wrist. Gansey eased down onto the bed so he was lying on his back, one shoulder brushing Ronan's. The ceiling above him was bare and unremarkable, but he fixed his gaze on it like it was the most interesting thing in the world. Looking at Ronan right now felt a little unsafe. Like it might make the room spontaneously combust. 

"The two men liked each other immediately, and they became fascinated by stories of the other's homeland. So they made a bargain. They would rule each other's country for a year, under an enchantment that would make the men look and sound like each other.”

Ronan propped himself up a little bit and leaned over into Gansey's space. Ronan studied his face with a hard expression, like he was trying to solve some kind of riddle.

"What's the point of that?"

"Oh, I don't know," Gansey said quietly. His fingers were laced together on his stomach. He had no idea what to do with his hands. "Research for the sake of scientific curiosity, I guess."

Ronan snorted. 

"Of  _ course _ you like this story."

"I can stop."

"I didn't say that. You're just a parody of yourself." Ronan nudged him, somehow settling in even closer. "Keep going."

Gansey couldn't resist a jab of his own.

"Does the fearsome Ronan Lynch need a bedtime story?"

"Prick," Ronan said halfheartedly. It would take more than that to piss him off, especially with two shots of whiskey in him. "What happens next?"

"They strike a bargain, and rule in each other's stead for a year and a day. Pwyll ruled the faerie kingdom well, and he never touched Arawn's wife, not any the nights she slept in his bed. The feat proved that he was as honorable as everyone believed him to be."

"Feat," Ronan scoffed, with a warm huff of air that tickled Gansey's cheek. "That's not so hard."

Gansey raised his eyebrows and pushed himself up onto his elbows. He was inches away from Ronan now, maybe less than that. Ronan didn't draw away.

"Every night?” Gansey pressed. “For a year? Lying right there under the covers next to the most beautiful person you've ever seen, inhumanly beautiful? Knowing that they want you just as badly as you want them, even if it's a case of mistaken identity? That you could probably get away with it, and that no one but the two of you would ever have to know?"

Ronan let Gansey work himself into a little lather, and Gansey's face flushed when he realized how intense he had gotten. Alcohol made him even more loquacious than usual, and it had a way of making him talk about all the wrong things, things that we so close to the truth they burned a little. 

"I meant it's easy if you're gay," Ronan said quietly, studying him with those sea-dark eyes. "It was a joke, Gansey."

Gansey swallowed hard, cheeks flaring with embarrassment. His mouth felt like sandpaper, and he was sure that Ronan must be able to hear how fast his heart was beating, leaning over him that close.

"Ah."

"Idiot," Ronan said fondly, his lips already brushing against Gansey's.

The kiss was tentative but quickly turned hungry, whiskey emboldening them both in the same way brushes with danger and sweltering summer nights usually did. This had happened before, of course, and it would probably happen again, but Gansey never knew when to expect it. It surprised him, how badly he wanted this, how he felt like his chest would crack in half with wanting if he didn’t get it. Sometimes the world closed in around him, tightening until all he could see was Ronan. His wildness, his quiet intensity, the way every word out of his mouth was either a knife or an olive branch. There was no in-between with Ronan, no half-measure. Everything about him was full-throttle intensity.

Ronan hooked his fingers into the belt loop of Gansey’s chinos and yanked Gansey on top of him. Gansey’s knees fit easily on either side of Ronan’s hips, his hands spread out on the bed beside Ronan’s shoulders. This was a familiar position, the result of teen tussles that turned into furtive grinding sessions in grass of the Barns, or quiet late night conversations spoken in words first, then in roaming touches that wouldn’t be remarked on the next day. But it had been a long time since Ronan kissed Gansey like this, with breathless nips and a smile on his lips. It had been a long time since Gansey was aware enough of anything outside of his research and his insomnia and his burning surety that Glendower was there, just out of reach, to even want it. But now he did. Badly. 

He was hard in his jeans, and when he rolled his hips against Ronan, he knew from feeling and the sharp intake of breath through Ronan’s teeth that Ronan was too. Gansey chased the sensation, breath coming warm and ragged. The alcohol in his system made his skin buzz pleasantly, and every wave of pleasure that went through him felt undeniable. Maybe it was the booze, or the late hour, or the thrilling warmth of another body cutting through the chill, but right now, all the mattered was getting himself — and Ronan — off.

Ronan’s hands slid lower, gripping his ass.

“You’re going to ruin your chinos,” Ronan muttered. Something about how clearly he didn’t care if that happened made Gansey’s head spin. Most days, Ronan’s recklessness infuriated him. Some nights, it just turned him on. 

“Fucking Christ,” Ronan groaned, head tipped back over the side of the bed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re gonna —”

His sentence ended in a gasp. Gansey’s feverish  kissing moved from Ronan’s mouth to his jaw to his throat, chapped lips scraping over blue-black stubble poking through pale skin. It was clumsy —Gansey didn’t have much practice at this—but he  _ wanted _ to be good at it, to be the best Ronan ever had. They almost never talked about K, or about the angry bruised hickeys Ronan sometimes sported the morning after their races, but Gansey liked to think that  _ this _ , whatever  _ this _ was, meant more. 

Ronan popped open Gansey’s fly and slipped his hand into his Chinos. Gansey made a strangled sound as Ronan’s fingers wrapped around him.

A wicked smile curved Ronan’s mouth as his hand moved up and down.

“Finish your story.”

“Ronan,” Gansey huffed, affronted. 

“Unless you can’t.”

The challenge went right to Gansey’s dick, and he hated Ronan just a little bit for knowing how to get under his skin like that. It wasn’t fair. It shouldn’t be legal. 

“Come on,” Ronan said, voice ragged as he arched his hips up. “Don’t leave me hanging. I want to know how it ends.”

Gansey’s cheeks flared hot as he fumbled with Ronan’s belt. Getting clothes off quick enough had never been so difficult. 

“It’s Welsh folklore,” he muttered, tossing the belt onto the ground as though it had wronged him. “The stories never end, they just keep going on and on forever.”

“Tell me what you remember,” Ronan said, lips pressed to the hollow of Gansey’s throat. He stroked Gansey slowly and deliberately, taking his time. “The two kings. What happened to them?”

The whiskey was mellow on his voice, and there was a sleepy, pleased warmth in his eyes that Gansey hadn’t seen in a long time. Gansey, by contrast, felt like he was a bottle of champagne that had been shaken to bursting, impulsive and needy and heedless. Maybe he just couldn’t hold his liquor. Or maybe Ronan drank to chase quietness.

“They stayed friends their whole lives,” Gansey said, spreading his fingers over the bulge in Ronan’s briefs. He loved the way Ronan’s breath hitched, the desperate, rapt look on his face. He always looked surprised when Gansey touched him. Like he was witnessing a holy act. “Pywll even married a faerie woman, Rhiannon. She has her own story, but it’s much sadder. The women’s usually are.”

Ronan pulled Gansey even closer, bodies flush in the darkness of the room. He wrapped a hand around his cock and Gansey’s at the same time, working them in delicious unison. Gansey keened at the skin-on-skin closeness, pressing his face into the crook of Ronan’s neck. Pleasure and dark spots swam behind his eyes. The sensation was almost too much. 

“ _ Ronan _ . You’re going to kill me, I-”

“Just keep talking,” Ronan said, quickening his pace. His grip was slick already. “I just... _ ngh _ . I want to hear you talk.”

Gansey did his best, trying to dreg up details from the Rhiannon myth from memory, with Ronan’s distracting, maddening touch driving him towards the edge. He kissed the story into Ronan’s hot neck and open mouth, shoved Ronan’s shirt up and trailed Welsh words along his chest. The story bled together in his mind, details of love and betrayal and blood all swirling together, but he did as Ronan asked. He didn’t stop talking, not until Ronan heaved a strangled breath and finished on them both. Gansey quickly followed, bucking his hip against Ronan’s grasp until they were both slack and spent. 

“Jesus,” Ronan said quietly, voice muffled by Gansey’s hair. He ran his free hand through the sweaty curls at the base of Gansey’s neck. “Jesus, Joseph...Christ.”

He ran through a few other saints, a breathlessly litany of blissed-out indulgence, while Gansey tried to catch his breath. They had done plenty of things before, but never _ that _ . Gansey decided immediately that he liked it, and knew with a sharp pang in his chest that he would let Ronan do anything else that he wanted, anything to keep him grounded and rooted to himself when the winter doldrums rolled through. 

“I’m a mess,” Gansey said, and he wasn’t entirely sure whether he was referring to the fact they both needed to clean themselves up, or the fact that he didn’t know what to do with the huge feeling he carried around in his chest every day. It was a feeling the human language didn’t have words for, but his best estimation was just “Ronan Lynch”. 

“You probably did ruin your Chinos,” Ronan conceded, and he sounded proud of himself. His fingers continued to trail through Gansey’s hair, making little circles at the base of his neck. Sober, and in the light of day, Ronan probably wouldn’t linger over him like this with those intimate touches. Even when they kissed, there was a certain sharp edge to it, like Ronan might pull away at any moment and make a joke, or start a fight, or act like he didn’t know damn well what Gansey tasted like. But now he didn’t seem concerned about coming across as too sweet.

Gansey wished they could have just a little bit more of this sometimes, without the whiskey.

“Come on,” Ronan said, gently hauling Gansey to one side. “We both need a hot shower.”  
Gansey looked up at him as Ronan stood.

“You want me to shower with you?”

A little bit of the old sharpness came back to Ronan, that defensive hunch in his shoulders.

“Unless you’re gonna be a shrinking violet about getting naked around me, in which case, whatever. Freeze if you want.”

Gansey caught his hand before Ronna could disappear into the bathroom, pulling it up to his mouth. He pressed a firm kiss to the palm of Ronan’s hand. Like a king’s seal on a peace treaty.

“No, I want to come with you. Run the hot water. Just give me a minute to pull myself together.”

Ronan nodded, looking neither disappointed or excited. This, Gansey knew, was a very carefully constructed expression of aloofness, one most often deployed on teachers or Declan. But then, just as Gansey thought Ronan was going to bang open the bathroom door and flip on the tap, Ronan swooped back down over the bed. He pressed two fingers under Gansey’s chin, tipping his face upwards, and kissed him on the mouth. Softly. More softly than Gansey thought Ronan was capable of.

“Kay,” Ronan said, and that brusque tone was back. “Just don’t take forever. If the hot water runs out, tough shit.”

“Aye aye,” Gansey said, and watched Ronan go in a sort of marvelled daze. Ronan Lynch was infuriating, and sometimes he was a thing of mystery, but he was nothing if not marvelous. The way storybook curses were, or acts of knightly valor, or enchantments that lasted a year and a day. 

Gansey just hoped that whatever spell they were under — the spell of Monmouth and sleepless nights — wouldn’t take Ronan with it when it broke.   
  



End file.
